A Little Princess / Маленькая принцесса. Книга для чтения на английском языке

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“I knew she was listening,” she said. “Why shouldn’t she?”

Lavinia tossed her head with great elegance.

“Well,” she remarked, “I do not know whether your mamma would like you to tell stories to servant girls, but I know MY mamma wouldn’t like ME to do it.”

“My mamma!” said Sara, looking odd. “I don’t believe she would mind in the least. She knows that stories belong to everybody.”

“I thought,” retorted Lavinia, in severe recollection[90 - retorted Lavinia, in severe recollection – возразила Лавиния, опомнившись], “that your mamma was dead.

How can she know things?”

“Do you think she DOESN’T know things?” said Sara, in her stern little voice. Sometimes she had a rather stern little voice.

“Sara’s mamma knows everything,” piped in Lottie. “So does my mamma – ’cept[91 - ’cept = except] Sara is my mamma at Miss Minchin’s – my other one knows everything. The streets are shining, and there are fields and fields of lilies, and everybody gathers them.

Sara tells me when she puts me to bed.”

“You wicked thing[92 - You wicked thing – Ты испорченная девочка!],” said Lavinia, turning on Sara; “making fairy stories about heaven.”

“There are much more splendid stories in Revelation[93 - Revelation – Откровение (последняя книга Библии, повествующая о конце Земли и Небесах)],” returned Sara.

“Just look and see! How do you know mine are fairy stories? But I can tell you” – with a fine bit of unheavenly temper – “you will never find out whether they are or not if you’re not kinder to people than you are now. Come along, Lottie.” And she marched out of the room, rather hoping that she might see the little servant again somewhere, but she found no trace of her when she got into the hall.

“Who is that little girl who makes the fires?” she asked Mariette that night.

Mariette broke forth into a flow of description.

Ah, indeed, Mademoiselle Sara might well ask. She was a forlorn little thing who had just taken the place of scullery maid – though, as to being scullery maid, she was everything else besides. She blacked boots and grates, and carried heavy coal-scuttles up and down stairs, and scrubbed floors and cleaned windows, and was ordered about by everybody.